For businesses large and small, relying on a cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite such as Microsoft Office 365 is becoming the norm. Enhancing productivity in your organisation is vital to get ahead in 2017 - and using Office 365 can help, if it's used right...

The company plans to develop internet communications software based on the
Thunderbird product, code and brand.

Mozilla will provide $3m of seed funding, and has recruited Dr David Ascher,
chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at
ActiveState,
to establish the new entity.

Dr Ascher has been an active member of the Mozilla community since 2000,
initially as the lead of
Komodo,
a Mozilla-based integrated development environment, and as a director of the
Python
Software Foundation.

"Innovating in mail and communications advances our vision of choice across
the spectrum of internet software," said Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla
Foundation.

"David has been a respected member of the Mozilla community for many years
and we are excited that he is joining Mozilla to lead this important effort."

After much consideration and feedback from the open source community, the
Mozilla Foundation board approved the creation of the new subsidiary dedicated
to developing, innovating and improving internet mail and communication
software.

Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, told
vnunet.com that Firefox
has around 110 million active users, compared to around 10 million active
Thunderbird users, and that both products were "fighting for resources within
the company".

He added that the company saw this as unfair on both products and took this
step to "allow Thunderbird to reach its full potential".

Nitot confirmed that Mozilla expects all current Thunderbird developers to
move across to the new subsidiary, and that both groups will still work closely
together to develop the code base of the Mozilla platform.